Romans 8:37

Romans 8:37

The Gain of the Christian Conquerors.

I. Its nature. "We are more than conquerors." As I have said, the phrase implies that in the conquest itself is something greater than mere conquest it is its own reward. To overcome temptation is better than to have had no temptation to grapple with, for the conquest, however hardly won, leaves the soul greater, stronger, and more blessed. (1) Every conquered temptation deepens our love to Christ, and thus we are more than conquerors. We come here on the track of that great law of the human soul, of the action of which all life is full the law that the trial of principle is its true strengthening. Passion catches fire by antagonism, difficulties waken it into stormy majesty, and it makes them its servants. Men speak of the power of circumstances to hinder a Christian life; of course they have a power, but it is none the less true that a strong love makes the most adverse circumstances the grandest aid to its own progress. (2) The love of Christ to us is a pledge that our conquests will become our gains. The living Christ is watching the temptation, and He will take care that its issue is a greater glory than that which could have come from a life of perpetual repose. God will open hereafter the marvellous book of the human soul, and show how each struggle left its eternal inscription of glory there.

II. Its attainment. How shall we know that we are becoming more than conquerors? When the love of Christ is the strongest power in life and a progressive power.

E. L. Hull, Sermons,1st series, p. 268.

Romans 8:37

The keynote of Easter is victory. The Church still strikes it in the services of the day. It may be very difficult for some of us to reach it. But it is so hard, that all other conquests, whatever they are, are by this victory vanquished. "We are more than conquerors."

I. Every miracle of Christ was done overflowingly. The lame men not only walked, but leapt. The wine which Jesus made for the wedding feast was more than almost any company could have consumed. The very fragments of His feeding are twelve basketsful. He supplies all wants, and then He is at all costs besides "Whatsoever thou spendest more." Now, apply this to our Easter theme. Christ has placed our life far above the level of the life we had lost. We lost a garden, we have gained a heaven. "More than conquerors." Then, too, His seeming absence is only a more ubiquitous presence. He is richer, and none are poorer; He is exalted, and none are orphaned. The problem is solved how there can be distance without separation how the communion can be invisible and yet be more real than when eye meets eye and hand clasps hand, for He is more than conqueror.

II. The very same principle which is thus embodied in the death and sufferings of Christ operates in the experience of every believer. Every man who is in earnest about his salvation has found, and the more earnest he is the more he has found it, that he is placed to contend not only with flesh and blood, but also with Satan. In this great contest, what is God's undertaking for His people? That they shall overcome? More than that. The power of Christ that is in you shall do what the presence of Christ always did when He walked the earth. Whenever walking this earth, an evil spirit met Christ, the evil spirit was afraid. And they shall be afraid of you. "More than conquerors."

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,5th series, p. 99.

References: Romans 8:37. Homilist,3rd series, vol. ii., p. 107; M. Rainsford, No Condemnation,p. 249; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 114; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 112.